Visible Farmers/Invisible Workers LOCATING IMMIGRANT LABOR IN FOOD STUDIES Sarah D. Wald Drew University Abstract The Jeffersonian narratives about food and farming that dominate the food movement in the United States too often obscure immigrants’ crucial role in US food production. This paper examines the narrative strategies that reveal and obscure immigrant workers’ connections to food by analyzing two popular texts about food and farming: Michael Pollan’s non-fictional The Omnivore’s Dilemma (2006) and Helena María Viramontes’s novel UndertheFeetofJesus (1995). Pollan’s focus on the relationship between farm and fork often erases workers’ visibility in the systems he describes. Viramontes’s novel offers a useful corrective as the text imagines the lives of farm workers, emphasizing the workers’ humanity to oppose the criminalization of farm workers. Reading the two works side-by-side suggests the limitations of a contemporary food movement oriented too heavily towards the consumer and asserts the possibilities of a food justice movement emphasizing workers’ and immigrants’ rights. Keywords: immigration, food movement, labor, farm workers Introduction The most famous slaughterhouse worker in all of US literature is an immigrant: Jurgis Rudkus, the Lithuanian protagonist of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle (1906). 1 From slaughterhouse workers to restaurant employees, immigrants remain central to US food production systems. According to the 2005 National Agricultural Workers Survey, 75 percent of migrant farm workers in the United States were born in Mexico. 2 Undocumented immigrants in particular are over-represented in several food systems occupations. A Pew Hispanic Center study estimated undocumented immigrant workers represented 27 percent of all butchers and other food processing employees and 12 percent of all food preparation employees. 3 Food 567 & Food, Culture Society volume14 issue4 december2011 DOI: 10.2752/175174411X13046092851479 Reprints available directly from the publishers. Photocopying permitted by licence only © Association for the Study of Food and Society 2011 Downloaded by [University Of Maryland] at 05:10 15 April 2016